Viola Hancock News Today

Shoppers couldn’t believe it in 1982 when it was announced the street’s Woolworths store was to close

Its 40 years since Woolworths closed its store in Cornmarket in Oxford but the popular chain is still held in great affection by shoppers. The…

An American visitor to Oxford bought an impressive photograph of a horse-drawn stagecoach outside a hotel.

Back in the 1980s the Miss Oxford competition was packed with contestants, Woolworths shut for good in Cornmarket in 1982, and hospital drivers were…

Cornmarket in Oxford has seen many changes over the years but shoppers couldn’t believe it in 1982 when it was announced the street’s Woolworths…

Cornmarket in Oxford has seen many changes over the years but shoppers couldn’t believe it in 1982 when it was announced the street’s Woolworths…

Cornmarket in Oxford has seen many changes over the years but shoppers couldn’t believe it in 1982 when it was announced the street’s Woolworths…

Meanwhile, battle raged over its future. Would the rundown Clarry reopen or be pulled down? And would Morris Garages which occupied the site behind - formerly stables for the horses which pulled the stagecoaches - be forced to move? Oxford City Council refused planning permission to build a Woolworth store on the site because, it said, the city needed hotel rooms. But opponents argued at a three-day public inquiry in 1952 that the building was so rundown that it was economically impos...